Hospital Rooms

During 2022 I was commissioned by Hospital Rooms to make new work for Beech Unit, Torbay Hospital, Devon. It was a huge pleasure and privilege to work with the staff and patients there to come up with something that would find a home there and be welcomed.

‘Hospital Rooms was founded in 2016 in response to a need to bring a greater sense of humanity and hope into the spaces that care for people at the most vulnerable times in their lives… Recognising the immense power of art to provide solace, provoke thought and engender human connection, Hospital Rooms aims to bring about a fundamental change in the way that mental health wards are conceived.’ (words by Anna Testar in accompanying publication)

Following are my words from the accompanying publication… ‘Entering a mental health ward, whether as a patient, a relative or a friend can feel uneasy for anyone. I’ve been there too, visiting my mum in crisis and I know that living there, however temporarily, can make one feel a little lost. My artwork hangs in the entrance lobby at Beech Unit and I hope it may offer a moment of calm and distraction from the potential worries and fears that come with visiting a loved one.

The artwork I’ve made for Beech Unit show a woodland from two perspectives. They are almost panoramic – I wanted to offer a sense of standing immersed in the forest, listening for birdsong and feeling the light streaming through the canopy. I worked from photographs I took one morning in early Spring, at Ashton Court, near Bristol, in a small beech woodland. I knew I wanted to capture the vivid, almost fluorescent green of the first leaves – their dotted colours against the dark web of branches, singing with promise.’

This is a monotype print on Japanese kozo paper.